Review: The Secret Recipe for Second Chances

***I won this book in a lucky door prize when Natasha Lester drew my name out of the hat at an Australian Writer’s Centre event sponsored by Hachette Australia***

I loved Barrett’s characters – they were an imperfect mix of lovable and hateable, just like human beings often are. The story was mostly told in alternating first-person female and first-person male perspectives, but in a twist on the technique, the male’s perspective was split into past and present, making for a compelling story.

I was jarred out of the story a couple of times when my impression of time passing or number of meals shared proved incorrect, or when the female character surprised me once by admitting she was writing the story (I thought she was living it).

The ‘mystery’ aspect was shallow – the motive for a character viciously beating another was because ‘it was himself’ he really wanted to beat. I won’t give away the major mystery in the story, but it was anti-climactic enough for one of the major characters to actually say that out loud.

But on the whole, the story was light-hearted and easy to read, the characters were real and solid, and the ending was sweet and perfectly befitted the genre.